Firefighters said that “the fire is about to be brought under control” as of Sunday, August 1. “There are still a few scattered outbreaks,” they added in a statement Sunday night.
Eight people have been hospitalized with respiratory problems and burns in hospitals in the region that remain on alert, according to Greek civil protection.
“The disaster is huge,” said Dimitris Kalogeropoulos, mayor of Aigialeias, one of the villages near the fire.
“No official damage assessment has been made yet, but about ten houses in the Ziria region have burned down, and many agricultural warehouses and stables have been destroyed, which is a lot for the region’s farmers”, he told the Greek news agency ANA.
The town hall of Aigialeias provided emergency accommodation on Saturday for residents forced to flee from the villages surrounded by flames.
In the villages of Ziria, Kamares, Achaias, and Labiri, nearly thirty houses, farmhouses, and stables caught fire, and entire olive groves were destroyed, according to the local newspaper Patrastimes.
“We lived through hell – we were afraid of losing everything in flames,” Giorgos Alexopoulos, a resident of Ziria, told AFP.
Greece faces a new heat wave on Friday, with temperatures between 42 and 44 degrees Celsius, according to weather services. Greek forests dried out from the heat face fires every summer. A few days ago, a fire devastated Mount Penteli, near Athens.
In July 2018, 102 people were killed in the coastal city of Mati, near Athens, the highest number of deaths caused by a fire in the country.
Title image: Smoke rises during a wildfire near Lampiri village, west of Patras, Greece, on Saturday, July 31, 2021. The fire, which started high up on a mountain slope, has moved dangerously close to seaside towns, and the Fire Service has sent a boat to help in a possible evacuation of people. (AP Photo/Andreas Alexopoulos)
